Jordan

POPULATION

Figure 6. United Nations Relief and Works Agency Camps in Jordan,
1989

Source: Based on information from United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Jordan.

Official Jordanian statistics gave a 1987 population figure of
2,896,800 for the East Bank. A 1982 population of 2,399,300 thus
indicated an annual growth rate of between 3.6 and 4 percent.
United Nations statistics projected a peak in the annual growth
rate at 4.11 percent in the period from 1990 to 1995, followed by
a steady decline to 2.88 percent in 2020.

Rapid development in the provision of health care services
during the 1970s and 1980s led to a decline in the crude death rate
from 17 per 1,000 population in 1965 to 7 per 1,000 population by
1986
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.). During the same period,
the infant mortality rate, a major indicator of a country's
development and health status, dropped from 115 to 46 per 1,000
live births. In 1986 life expectancy at birth was sixty-five years
(sixty-three for males and sixty-seven for females). The lowered
death rate, a high birth rate, and lowered infant mortality rate
combined to generate a major demographic problem in the late 1980s.
At the end of the decade, more than half Jordan's population was
below fifteen years of age
(see
fig. 5). This situation strained
the country's already limited resources, and employment for the
burgeoning group of young people became increasingly difficult to
provide.

Accurate demographic figures were difficult to compile because
of the substantial number of Jordanians residing and working abroad
and the continuous flow of West bank Palestinians with Jordanian
passports back and forth between the East and West banks. According
to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, about 224,000 people were admitted to
UNRWA refugee camps in the East Bank immediately after the June
1967 War. In 1986 UNRWA cited 826,128 registered refugees living on
the East Bank, of whom about 205,000 were living in refugee camps.

The exact number of Palestinians living on the East Bank was
unknown. Estimates usually ranged from 60 to 70 percent of the
total population. Official government statistics did not
distinguish between East Bank and West Bank Jordanians
(see Palestinians
, this ch.).

The government did not have an officially articulated
population policy or birth control program. Rather, in 1979 it
adopted a "child spacing program" that was designed to improve the
health of mother and child, and not specifically to lower the
fertility rate. This noninterventionist approach considered family
planning to be one component of an integrated maternal-child health
and primary health care program. Government clinics and private
medical services delivered family planning services upon request
and contraceptives were widely available at low cost. In 1987 there
were 116 maternal-child health care centers--up from 93 in 1983--
providing prenatal and postnatal care and a wide range of birth
control information.

Jordan's high population growth can be attributed primarily to
high fertility rates. In 1986 the
World Bank (see Glossary)
calculated this rate as 6.0 births for each woman over the span of
her reproductive years, one of the highest fertility rates in the
region. This rate was projected to decline to 4.2 births by the
year 2000. The fertility rate varied, however, between women
residing in rural and urban areas and according to educational
attainment. Educated women tended to marry at a slightly older age
than uneducated women, and this delay contributed to a lower
fertility rate. Urban women achieved lower fertility rates through
modern methods of contraception, particularly the pill. Fertility
rates were lowest in Amman, higher in smaller urban areas such as
Irbid and Az Zarqa, and highest in rural areas. In rural areas
modern contraceptive usage was lower, although breast-feeding,
which serves to delay the return of fertility, was extended for a
longer period than in the cities. World Bank data indicated that 27
percent of married women of child-bearing age were using
contraception in the 1980s.

A woman was expected to have to bear five children, including
at least two sons, in fairly rapid succession. Women gained status
and security in their marital household by bearing children.
According to a study conducted in the early 1980s by Jordanian
anthropologists Seteney Shami and Lucine Taminian in a poor,
squatter area in Amman, reproductive behavior was subject to
several factors. If a woman had given birth to two or more sons,
she might begin to space her pregnancies or stop bearing children
for a while. Household structure--nuclear, extended, or multiple
family--also appeared to be a crucial factor in determining
fertility. The presence of other women in a household encouraged
women to bear more children to improve their relative position in
the household.

The overall population density for the East Bank in 1987 was
established at about thirty persons per square kilometer. There was
wide regional variation and the rate of urbanization was high. East
of Al Mafraq, in an area encompassing almost two-thirds of the
country, no towns had a population of more than 10,000. The bulk of
Jordan's population was centered in the governorate of Amman and
the smaller urban areas of Irbid, As Salt, and Az Zarqa. The 1987
population totals of the eight governorates ranged from 1,203,000
in Amman to 101,000 in the Maan Governorate. According to World
Bank figures, about 70 percent of the population lived in urban
areas. The nation's capital, Amman, accounted for more than one-
third of the total population. Rapid urbanization appeared to be
the result of a high fertility rate and rural-urban migration. If
urbanization continued at the high annual rate of 4 to 5 percent,
it was estimated that by the year 2000, nearly three-fourths of the
population could be living in Amman, Az Zarqa, Irbid, As Salt, and
Ar Ramtha.

The remainder of the population resided in villages scattered
in an uneven pattern throughout Jordan. The nomadic and seminomadic
population was very small, at most 2 to 3 percent of the
population. The clearest concentrations of villages were in the
fertile northwest corner and the Jordan Valley. Village size varied
markedly from region to region. At one time, size related to the
productive capacity of the surrounding farmland. Larger villages
were located in the more fertile, generally irrigated regions where
family members could reach their fields with relative ease. While
village populations continued to grow, rural-urban migration
drained off a steady stream of young men and sometimes whole
families. Villages provided little employment for their residents,
and agriculture as a way of life had declined precipitously since
the 1950s.

Camps of nomadic and seminomadic beduins still existed in the
late 1980s. Nomadic tribes were found mainly in the desert area
east of a line from Al Mafraq to Maan. The area, about 400
kilometers long and 250 kilometers wide, is known as the
badiya (pl., bawaadi, meaning desert or semidesert).
Seminomadic beduins were located in the Al Ghawr and near Irbid.
These seminomads descended to the Jordan Valley in the winter
because of its warm climate and grazing ground for their herds.
Traditionally, many of these seminomads also farmed plots of land
in the valley. In the summer, they moved their herds up into the
hills to avoid the intense heat.

The native inhabitants of the Jordan Valley are known as Al
Ghawarna, or people of Al Ghawr. Prior to the June 1967 War, the
valley was home to about 60,000 people engaged in agriculture and
pastoralism. In 1971 the population had declined to 5,000 as a
result of the June 1967 War and the 1970-71 conflict between the
Palestinian guerrillas and the Jordanian armed forces
(see The Guerrilla Crisis
, ch. 1). By 1979, however, the population had
reached 85,000 as a result of government development efforts
designed to attract people to settle in this area.

Refugee camps emerged in the wake of the Arab-Israeli War of
1948. The original refugee settlements were tent camps, but in most
places tents were replaced by rows of galvanized steel, aluminum,
and asbestos shelters. There were initially five refugee camps--
Irbid, Az Zarqa, Amman New (Al Wahdat), Al Karamah (later
dismantled), and Jabal al Hussein-- but six additional emergency
camps were established for refugees from the June 1967 War--Al
Hisn, Suf, Jarash, Baqah, Talbiyah, and Marka. Most of the camps
were located near major cities in the northwest
(see
fig. 6).